When Luther evaluates the claims of papal authority and the extravagant lives these authority figures are leading, he realizes there are inherent flaws. He see’s that the Romanist have three walls that they use to defend their authority and lifestyles. These walls are the decrees declaring that temporal power had no jurisdiction, only the pope can interpret scripture, and that no one can summon a council but the pope. These walls keep the powerful in charge and prevent anyone else from questioning their power. Luther seems to favor using scripture to demolish these walls. For the first wall he calls upon scripture to attack papal authority and prove that we are all one body within the Christian church and every member has to work to serve other members – one person does not have ultimate authority. To destroy the second wall, Luther calls upon scripture and sarcasm. He sarcastically states that because the Romanists see no use in scripture, all scripture should just be burned and everyone should be content with unlearned men running Rome. To break down the third wall, Luther relies on scripture yet again. He says that we need to rely on scripture to reprove and restrain the pope; we can accuse the pope and thus call the church together.

Luther’s writing of Fool’s Song proposes over twenty ways that the Church needs to reform in order be restored and follow gospel teachings. There were three main proposals that stood out as damaging to the church as an institution. The first was setting the Christian nobility against the pope. At this time, the Church relied so heavily on support from nobility that without it, the Church could crumble. The nobility upheld and funded the papacy. This proposal could effectively end the papal authority. The second proposal was to abolish pilgrimages to Rome. Having pilgrimages to Rome enables the pope to declare Rome as a holy site and bring revenue into that area. This also supported the papal authority because people would pilgrimage to the pope’s home and essentially make pilgrimages to the pope himself. Pilgrimages are for holy sites and to commemorate holy beings. The third proposal was to end the sale of indulgences. This threatened the presumed power of the pope to forgive sins and would end a majority of funding for the Church. If the Church were to lose papal authority and funding from European countries at the time, there was the possibility of the organization collapsing, especially with such a strong force threatening it.